Jesse Kelly, the Tea Party-backed Republican who narrowly lost to U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in 2010, filed paperwork Tuesday to run to replace the retiring congresswoman in a special election.

Kelly, who nearly unseated Giffords, filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission to seek the CD8 seat that Giffords will step down from this week.

John Ellinwood, Kelly's spokesman, only would say that Kelly would be "announcing something formally soon."

A special partisan primary election will be held in April, with a special general election following in June.

Those elections will occur while candidates jockey to be picked to represent the newly drawn CD2 district, which mostly overlaps the old 8th Congressional District.

The Giffords-Kelly race came down to the wire; Giffords edged the GOP candidate by about 4,000 votes in a contest that took days to count.

Special election

Giffords' resignation has set political wheels turning.
Constitutionally, members of the House of Representatives must be
elected, not appointed.

Gov. Jan Brewer must call special primary and general elections once Giffords submits her resignation, said Pima County Democratic Party Chair Jeff Rogers.

Thanks for reading TucsonSentinel.com. Tell your friends to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

A partisan primary must be held within 80 to 90 days of her resignation,
with a general election to fill the seat for the remainder of her term
50 to 60 days after that. Brewer must set the dates for the elections
within three days of Giffords' resignation.

The primary will fall in April, while the special general election will be held sometime in June.

Candidates will have only 30 days after the elections are set to gather
about 800 nominating signatures to gain a spot on the primary ballot —
the same number as for a regular elextion.

That election will take place as a normal general election cycle is
underway, with primaries scheduled for August and a general election in
November.

As candidates campaign for the CD8 seat, there also will be a race
getting underway in the new CD2 that generally overlaps the same
territory. GOP-leaning Marana, Oro Valley and Saddlebrooke, which are in
CD8, are outside the new district, edging the second contest slightly
in the Democratic direction.

The concurrent contests will create wrinkles in the process, Rogers said.

"I hadn't even considered that," he said Sunday. "Different people could win the different elections."

Rogers said the Democratic Party hasn't had discussions about who might run if Giffords were to resign.

"We've been pretty deferential to the congresswoman about that," he said. "It wasn't appropriate to have those sorts of talks."

"We're all of course saddened that she doesn't feel up to serving right now. It's a great loss for Southern Arizona."

"I made a couple of calls just moments ago," he said, declining to name those who might now be pondering a congressional run.

Carolyn Cox, the chairwoman of the Pima County Republican Party, declined to speculate on the upcoming elections.

"I'm sad that she had to resign," she said Sunday afternoon.

Although Giffords narrowly held off Kelly in 2010, she was widely considered to be a shoo-in if she chose
to run again.

Republican state Rep. Frank Antenori, who's laid the groundwork for a
run, said last year that he would not seek a congressional seat if
Giffords were in the race. He did not immediately respond to a request
for comment Sunday.

Also maneuvering for a run on the GOP side is University of Arizona sports announcer Dave Sitton.

With Giffords not running, there will be jockeying on the Democratic
side, as well. State Reps. Steve Farley and Matt Heinz, along with state
Sen. Paula Aboud, have been rumored to be interested in seeking a
vacant seat.

"I honestly believed she would be able to continue," Farley said Sunday afternoon.

Farley said he's "pretty excited about what we can do in the
Legislature," predicting that the Democrats will be able to pick up
seats and break the GOP stranglehold on the state Senate.

"I'd be willing to serve" in Congress, the assistant House Democratic leader said.

Other names floated have included Giffords' chief of staff, Pia
Carusone, and her district director, Ron Barber, who was also shot on
Jan. 8. Giffords' husband, Mark Kelly, has denied rumors that he is
interested in seeking his wife's seat.

Giffords' endorsement of a candidate will have a great impact on the
race, Farley said, both in terms of voter enthusiasm and funding; the
congresswoman is sitting on a sizeable campaign warchest.

Well, I see nothing wrong with that. I know that he can’t do it now because everyone seems to be overly-sensitive and can’t tell the difference between metaphor and literal, but at the time there was nothing wrong with it.

Well, this certainly makes sense. As the story points out, Kelly almost won that election. And, considering that the Giffords camp saw him as so much of a threat that they had to resort to outright lies during the campaign to smear him to win that narrow victory…imagine how the election results would have been had Giffords been ethical in the campaign and the electorate smart enough to see through her lies.

I wish Jesse Kelly the best of luck. According to the new maps, I’m in the district…and but were I standing on the roof of my house looking West I could literally see into the newly drawn district.

I also wish Antenori good luck. It’s nice to finally see a political race in this region at any layer of government that actually has some good choices. I would love to be able to ask myself not which is worse, but which is better…perhaps this time around I can do that.

Yes!

I want to help TucsonSentinel.com offer a real news alternative!

We're committed to making quality news accessible; we'll never set up a paywall or charge for our site. But we rely on your support to bring you independent news without the spin. Use our convenient PayPal/credit card donation form below or contact us at donate@tucsonsentinel.com today.